If you are outside Japan and planning to come here — to work, to study, or to join your family — you can begin the process now, from where you are. You do not need to be in Japan, and you do not need to speak Japanese.
You cannot file from abroad. Someone in Japan has to.
Before a Japanese embassy will issue you a long-stay visa, you generally need a Certificate of Eligibility (COE). The application for it is filed with a regional immigration office inside Japan. You cannot submit it yourself from another country.
Normally this is handled by your future employer, your school, or a relative already living in Japan. But that is not always available. Your employer may never have hired from overseas before. Your school may handle only the paperwork it is obliged to handle. You may have no one here at all.
In that situation, a registered filing agent — a gyoseishoshi lawyer authorised by the Director-General of a regional immigration bureau — can file on your behalf. That is what this office does.
What we can do for you
File your COE application
We prepare the application and supporting documents, file it online, respond to any request for additional documents, and keep you informed until the result is issued. Neither you nor your employer needs to attend an immigration office.
Because waiting time for additional documents counts towards your total processing time, the work we do before filing is what actually shortens your wait. See COE processing times for the current official figures by status of residence.
Tell you which routes are open to you, before you commit
Many people contact us before they have a concrete plan. They know they want to come to Japan; they do not yet know whether that means a work visa, a student route, a business route, or something else — or whether they qualify at all.
For those cases we produce a written route report: an assessment of which statuses of residence are realistically available to you given your qualifications, funds and circumstances, what each one requires, roughly how long each takes, and where the obstacles are. It is a document you can keep, reread and act on, not a conversation you have to remember.
If you then decide to proceed, the report becomes the basis of the application.
Act for you in Japan after you have applied
Sometimes the application already exists, and the problem is that no one in Japan is following it up. You may have filed it yourself before leaving Japan. Your school or employer may have filed it and then stopped replying. Or your school may be declining to file a COE application for you, and you cannot find out why from abroad.
In those cases we can act as your point of contact in Japan:
- Enquire with the immigration bureau handling your application about its status. Immigration decides what it will disclose to someone other than the parties to the application, so we cannot guarantee that it will answer.
- Contact your school or employer, find out what is holding things up, and pass information and documents between you and them. Where they filed the application, we can also ask them to make the status enquiry themselves.
- Request disclosure of your records held by immigration, as your authorised representative, where that is the only way to find out what has happened. Some information may be withheld under the disclosure rules.
What we cannot do. We cannot negotiate on your behalf where there is a dispute — for example, demanding that a school accept you or file for you, demanding a refund of fees, or contesting a decision. Under Japanese law, only an attorney (bengoshi) may handle such matters. If your situation turns out to be one of these, we will tell you at the outset.
Because every case is different, we quote a fee after hearing your situation in the free first consultation.
How we work with clients outside Japan
Everything in English, in writing
We work with you in English, by email. This is deliberate rather than a limitation. Immigration documents turn on precise wording, time zones make live calls awkward, and a written record means you have every instruction and every answer in a form you can check later — and translate, if you want a second opinion in your own language.
Contracts signed electronically
We prepare an English-language engagement agreement and execute it by electronic signature. Nothing has to be printed, couriered, notarised or stamped. From first enquiry to a signed contract is usually a matter of days, wherever you are.
Payment by credit card
Fees can be paid by credit card. There is no need to arrange an international bank transfer to Japan — a process that in many countries is slow, expensive, and requires paperwork of its own before the money moves.
The first consultation is free
There is no charge for the first consultation and no obligation to go further. We will not invoice you for it under any circumstances.
To make it useful, tell us in your first message:
- Your nationality, and which country you are currently in
- What you want to do in Japan — work, study, join family, start a business
- Whether you already have an employer, school or relative in Japan
- Your education and work history, in outline
- When you hope to arrive
We will tell you honestly whether we can help, what it would involve, and what it would cost. If your case is straightforward enough to handle yourself, we will say so.
Akihiro Yuuki — Certified Specific Administrative Scrivener and Certified Immigration Support Administrative Scrivener (Gyoseishoshi Lawyer), registered with the Kanagawa Administrative Scrivener Association. Registration No. 25091195. Representative of Yuuki Legal Office, Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan. Over twenty years of practical experience in legal, financial and international affairs.